How To Stop The Declining Trust In Leadership

Leadership may be the second oldest profession in the world, but we still seem to have a dire shortage of good leaders when we need them most. One reason for this is the fact the value of leadership has become seriously diluted by a continuing decline in the level of trust we have in our organizations. This is true for both private and public organizations, and in their leaders whether elected or appointed.

This cannot continue, and those of us who believe leadership is both a sacred trust and a privilege must take steps to turn the tide of declining trust. To do so, we must not shy away from holding our leaders to the highest standards of competency, character and capability.

Setting the stage for leadership

While each organization is different, the issues and challenges they encounter are stunningly similar:

– A lack of understanding of the organization’s objectives.

– A lack of clarity around how and why certain decisions get made.

– Gaps in how information is shared from the top to the bottom of the organization.

– Gaps in accountability for performance at all levels of the organization.

Even though the tone may be set from the top, the real impetus for change comes from a powerful combination of customers on the outside and middle management from within. These two “constituencies” are the barometer by which we evaluate whether a senior leadership team has the currency of trust it needs to steward the organization through the choppy waters of change.

Without the full and enthusiastic support of these two groups, leaders simply will not have permission to lead in the way they must to make the changes that ensure an organization’s continued relevance.

An issue of credibility

It seems the essential building block for trust lies in the credibility of those who are asked to be leaders. It may be simplistic, but without credibility, senior leaders will not have the currency they need to finance the changes they need to make.

The power to lead is granted by the people in direct proportion to the permission they give the leaders, based on the credibility they have earned.

This definition of leadership turns the thinking of many people on its head, and yet it is exactly the type of change in perspective needed to rebuild the lost levels of trust which we are witnessing.

It begs the question of how do you build credibility? The answer is through:

Transparency: The worst truth is still better than the best lie.

Diversity: Ensure a diversity of input in order to examine contradictory points of view.

Empathy: Listen without judgment and connect on a human level.

Decision making: Focus on the “how” and not just the “what.”

Improve your decisions

We all like to think we are better than we really are. In business, however, it can be fatal. An organization’s value rises or falls on the sum total of all the decisions (big and small) made by its people over time. Consequently, it would seem logical that senior leaders should pay more attention to the judgment behind the decisions they and their people make.

But they don’t. In fact, one of the most common symptoms of organizational under performance lies in the realm of the decision-making process and the organization’s inability to make brilliant decisions quickly, rather than mediocre decisions slowly. This is a disease with a known cure, and all it takes is a leader willing to do something about it.

To get better at making crucial judgments leaders must: Build a more diverse set of perspectives through which to frame decisions; focus on the assumptions that go into the premise behind their views; think through the consequences of their decisions, both intended and otherwise; and search for more than one “right” answer.

Remember, you are only as good as your last great decision.

The challenge lies not in the availability of answers, but rather in the deficits of candor, courage and ambition; the lack of willingness to ask the tough, insightful questions; the fear of doing the hard work necessary to make things better; the resistance to change, bred out of comfort with the statusquo. Here are some ways to make changes:

Get outside

Leaders need to get to where real people and customers live. Fly-by visits are not the answer. The leader of the future has to be willing to dig in and find creative ways to really interact with the people who have the insights they need to drive the changes they want.

Shake it up

Boredom is a habit that is acquired by those who expect others to do things for them. There is no shortage of work to be done, challenges to face, problems to solve and ideas to be explored. The great leaders we know of are restless by nature and dissatisfied by temperament. There is no time like the present for the senior leader to take on the role of the Chief Agitator, or the Chief Chaos Creator.

Don’t be afraid of the truth

Leaders can hide for a short time, but they cannot hide forever. The truth is liberating, if you have confidence in your ability to stare it in the face. Too many leaders allow themselves to live with the knowledge there is a gap between what they hear and what they feel. The great leaders are never afraid of knowing where they stand, because they know that moving forward is inevitable, no matter how inconvenient.

Make a difference

The value of leaders comes not from what they manage, but how they lead. Every leader needs to be guided and fueled by a deep inner passion about something. Vanilla leadership is not what today’s more challenging environment demands, so get out there and find something meaningful to do.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. How would you begin to break through your thoughts, emotions and actions to becoming a more trusted leader? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

Five Ways You Will Sabotage Selling Opportunities

When it comes to growing revenues, companies find themselves under great pressure to sell faster and better and then keep climbing to greater levels of growth.  Many factors are putting pressures on sellers to sell more and do it for less, including dysfunctional selling and buying methods.  There are terrific books on developing a new sales framework that bust through bad selling and buying habits.  Several that I recommend are, "Let's Get Real or Let's Not Play" by Mahan Khalsa and Randy Illig, "You Can't Teach a Kid to Ride a Bicycle in a Seminar" by David Sandler and "The Sandler Rules, 49 Timeless Selling Principles and How to Apply Them" by Dave Mattson.

Although this is not an exhaustive list, it can help lay the ground work for a much more dynamic and compelling experience for both parties.  It certainly begins the process of understanding more clearly how to build and grow a value based relationship. The better we are at using these tools, the higher the probability of successful engagement.  

1 ~ You Will Fail To Establish Credibility During The Initial Phone Call or Meeting
The primary questions looming in the minds of prospects when they first talk with salespeople are, “What do you know about my company?” and “What do you know about my industry?”
If, in the first few minutes of the conversation you don’t convey through your questions or comments that you understand something about the company, it’s goals or the challenges it faces, the interaction will be short-lived. You’ll be perceived as “just another salesperson.”

Doing research to keep up with what is going on in your industry is mandatory. If you didn’t, how would you know the best way to position your product or service to take advantage of current trends, market demands, economic conditions, etc.? Going one step further to learn about the prospects you plan to contact (or a prospect who may have initially contacted you) is not only a logical extension of that research, but it is necessary so you can keep the focus on the eventual conversation on the prospect rather than on your product or service. There will be plenty of time to talk about the product or service you have to offer once you’ve established that if fulfills a recognized need, but not before.

Researching a prospective client is not difficult. A visit to its website, a Google search, a visit to LinkedIn, and a search through industry association websites and reports can provide valuable information. Imagine starting a conversation with a President or CEO of a company by referring to a recent trade journal article about him or his company. By doing that, you immediately elevate your status from just another sales person to a credible individual.

2 ~ You Won’t Control The Conversation
A common complaint many prospects have about salespeople is that they are too self-centered. That is, they spend too much time talking about themselves, their companies and their products and too little time focusing on the prospect’s needs.

A common complaint many salespeople have about prospects is that, conversationally speaking, they spend too much time wandering around in left field. That is. They talk about everything except the topic the salesperson wants to discuss.

Can they both be correct? It does not really matter. What does matter, however, is that the conversation remains focused on topics that keep the selling process moving forward. And that, first and foremost, is your responsibility.

When you initiate a call to a prospect, have a specific reason for calling (other than introducing yourself or your company). If you don’t have a specific reason that addresses a prospect’s current or potential future need, then don’t call (and refer to #1 above).

By reviewing the agenda (up front contract) at the beginning of the meeting, you establish a yardstick by which you can measure the progress and effectiveness of the meeting as well as a point of reference for keeping discussions on topic.

3 ~ You Won’t Add Value To the Experience
Prospects are often accused of playing their cards close to the vest for fear of revealing some information that the salesperson will exploit. Salespeople do the same thing.   They avoid providing too many details about how they do what they do for fear that the prospect will use this information to negotiate a better deal with an incumbent or another vendor or create the desired outcome on their own.

If your prospects don’t learn something new during the time they invest in you, what value did you contribute to the encounter? None! How are you any different than every other salesperson? You’re not!

So, how do you provide value without giving away too much? You can focus on the outcomes your product or service delivers for your prospect. You can describe for them and the means of accomplishing them from a conceptual perspective without giving away the “how to” specifics. By understanding how to restructure the sales process and establishing qualification benchmarks that ensure the salespeople are investing their time with the prospects they have the greatest chance of closing.

Also, you can ask thought provoking questions, especially during initial meetings that get prospects to view their situations from new perspectives – ideally ones favorable to your product or service.
Finally, you can ask questions that help prospects discover unrecognized underlying reasons for their problems or unanticipated roadblocks to accomplishing their goals. Doing so gives you credibility, separates you from the rest of the pack, and more importantly gives the prospect a reason to do business with you.

4 ~ You Will Avoid Asking Important Questions
When you engage with prospects, they are sizing you up, your company, and its products or services. And while they are doing that, they are deciding if you are credible, if your company is reputable and if you can provide a best-fit solution for the outcomes they desire.

You, too, should be doing some “sizing up.” You need to determine if you can indeed deliver best-fit solutions for your prospects’ needs, if there is sufficient urgency and priority for them to make buying decisions in a timely manner, and if they have the resources in place to make the purchases.

The only way you can make those determinations is by asking questions – sometimes pointed questions and potentially uncomfortable questions (perhaps for you and the prospect). But you must ask them nonetheless.
Some of the information you will need to uncover in order to fully qualify (QCP versus QPC) or disqualify an opportunity includes:

• Whether the prospect is working with or talking to other providers
• When multiple providers are involved, how the prospect will ultimately decide which one gets the business
• Who is involved in the decision making process and what their concerns are regarding the issues surrounding the ultimate decision
• Whether or not funding is in place for the purchase…and if not, when it will be in place, exactly
• By when the buying decision will be made

Prospects my “volunteer” this information during the course of your discussions. But if they don’t, YOU WILL HAVE TO ASK! You may be uncomfortable asking some of these questions, but a few minutes of discomfort is preferable to wasting hours working on presentations or proposals for opportunities you have little or no chance of closing.

5 ~ You Will Leave Things Open-Ended
It is not uncommon for salespeople to end phone conversations of face-to-face meetings with prospects without establishing clear and specific next steps. Both parties have a general idea, their own idea, or not idea about what happens next, by when it will happen, or who will initiate whatever it is. I refer to this a mutual mystification.

As every scheduled contact with a prospect or a client should begin with a review of a previously established, mutually agreed to agenda (see #2 above), it should also conclude with a mutual agreed to next step…even if the next step is a NO step, I.e., you are closing the file. And if there is a ‘next step’ to keep the selling process moving forward, it’s up to you to identify it, clarify it, and obtain your prospect’s agreement to it.

If your closing rate is suffering or it’s taking you longer than it should to close sales, you may be sabotaging your own efforts. Take a close look at how you interact with your prospects and make sure that each interaction adds value to the relationship, is focused on defining the opportunity and keeps the selling process moving forward.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. How are you effectively developing your prospect pipeline? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

5 Ways to Better Understand & Become A Better Leader

As a leader it's your job to guide your team towards success and reaching specific goals. You might successfully reach those goals, but are you leading or managing that team? Are you able to really relate to your team and drive engagement & retention? How are you driving performance and development of your people and how are you helping your team members relate to one another who come with different values, filters and experiences? Do you influence and inspire or do you organize and direct? Big differences. Here are five tips to help you evaluate and improve your effectiveness as a leader.

What's Your Motivation?
Let's start with you. How are you viewing your leadership position? What are your motivations in leading? Don’t tell me that it is one of the requirements of your job. Really? Where is the enthusiasm in that? Your attitude is going to show your true colors and your team will see right through your façade.

In order to be an effective leader, you need to have the right motivations based on your values. Just as important, you need to know and understand the motivational values of your team and your team members so collectively you can deploy the right strengths to the right situations at the right time to more effectively achieve the outcomes desired. You really need to ask yourself why you want to lead and if necessary hire a coach to help you through this process. If you look at leadership as an honor and in your heart you feel leadership is your destiny, ask yourself what difference can I make in the lives of the people around me. You will be starting from the right place.

Connect & Communicate

Leading others requires a mutual sense of trust and understanding between leader and all team members. Leaders make other people feel important through effective listening. As a first step toward that goal, leaders should learn to connect. Building a real personal connection with your teammates is vital to developing the shared trust necessary to build a strong culture of accountability and exceptional performance. With that kind of culture in place, the team can achieve success, develop a more engaging environment and create greater team and individual fulfillment.

See our previous post on emotional intelligence as we believe that being a “more human" leader requires positivity, purpose, empathy, compassion, humility and service. These key traits will put you on the road to genuine connections and successful engagement with the members of your team.

Focus On The Positives
As much as leaders wish that their team's day-to-day operations could run smoothly all the time, they're bound to run into an obstacle(s). Whether it's a minor miscommunication or something major, the way a leader handles a negative situation says a lot about his or her leadership skills. Robert Mann, author of "The Measure of a Leader," recommends focusing on the good in any set of circumstances.

"Look at three positive things about a problem before you identify what makes it dissatisfying," Mann said. "The more you look at the positives in a problem, the more positively people react with one another." This involves moving from a focus on what is going wrong to what is going right. Here is something to think about, Don't let perfect get in the way of better."

Show, Don't Tell
Effective leaders show others what is required rather than simply telling them. Leaders should coach their team members toward a more collaborative, committed work environment - without coaxing them. Leaders that control their teams to do certain things in certain ways will not get the level of engagement the leader is looking for. It also will not get your team accountable and feel ownership. Coaching is about helping the people you lead recognize the choices they have in front of them. People will then take a ownership over the direction of the project.

Ask for feedback
An honest self-assessment of your own leadership can be difficult. This is why feedback from mentors, accountability partners, or team members is invaluable in evaluating your effectiveness. Also working with a professional coach can also help you discover areas that need improvement. A professional who helps you develop a plan to achieve your leadership goals can be more highly motivational and lead to sustainable changes more quickly.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. How would you begin to break through your thoughts, emotions and actions to becoming a more self aware leader? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

10 Essential Selling Principles Most People Get Wrong

As an executive and leadership adviser, I meet professionals, entrepreneurs and other organizational executives all the time. They are very successful people who are focused on achieving results. Most often, but not always, they are looking for a more effective approach to generating new business or clients. They find the sales process extremely challenging and perplexing, and fewer still have the courage to walk directly into their challenges and really learn from their mistakes. This leads to doing the same selling traps continuously. Help!

Here are 10 Essential Selling Principles That Most People Get Wrong.
1. Assuming the problem that the prospect communicates is the real problem. It’s normal and natural to assume this; however, it’s never the real problem and is critically important to look deeper into each scenario. Like a physician, we must ask ourselves “is this the prospect’s real problem or is it just a symptom?” Before diagnosing and offering how we can address their challenges, we have to ask more questions to make sure we’ll be getting at the root of their problem, and bringing value to the prospect by supporting their true goals.

2. Talking too much. We talk way too much. Blah, blah, blah. Here’s a tip, use the 70/30 rule. The prospect should be talking 70% of the time, while most of our 30% is in the form of questions. So often and especially in the beginning of a relationship, we think they need to be doing all the talking, when they should be listening and asking questions. Keep in mind, if a prospect wanted a rundown of our products or services, he or she could just visit our website. The sales process is a conversation, and an honest and open one at that.

3. Believing that we can sell anybody anything. People don’t buy because of our reasons. A prospect must go through a period of self-discovery before making the decision that our product or service is the right solution. Prospect resistance is pre-programmed and we all know we don’t like to be told what to do (or buy). A better approach than “selling by telling” is to ask key questions or relate third-party stories that allow the prospect to discover the benefits and advantages of our product or services. When we ask questions that lead to a discovery, the prospect then “owns” the discovery and the resistance disappears. After all, people don’t tend to argue with their own data.

4. Over-educating the prospect when we should be selling. The initial goal in selling is to find out why, and under what circumstances, the prospect will buy from us. Asking questions is first, and sharing our materials and specifics comes next. Sell today, educate tomorrow.

 
5. Thinking that your sales “presentation” will seal the deal. We should always be helping the prospect discover the best reasons to buy from us – not telling them why they should. This is the qualifying phase in understanding their problems, budget and decision making process. We need to keep our pride in check, get off our “high horse” and stop throwing up our knowledge ~ our features and benefits. We are so proud of what we know and we think the prospect cares ~ they don’t! If they don’t qualify then we don’t present and thank them for their time. The prospect should know that they’ll be buying from us long before we present our proposal. The effective process is to Qualify, Close, Present rather than Qualify, Present, Close.

6. Failing to remember that salespeople are decision makers, too. Every step of the way through the sales cycle, a salesperson must make critical decision as to whether to continue investing time in the relationship with the prospect. If you as the salesperson are a poor decision-maker, your lack of clarity and decisive action will be mirrored in your prospect’s behavior. Remember, the shorter your selling cycle, the more leads you close over time.

7. Reading minds. Always get the facts from our prospect about what they need and why. When the prospect is vague, politely ask for clarity. Veteran sales people are often the culprits of “reading minds” because they think they’ve seen it all. But when they jump to conclusions, they make erroneous assumptions that lead to wasted time at best, lost opportunities at worst. As the old adage goes, “to assume is to make an ass out of you and me.”

8. Working as an “unpaid consultant” in an attempt to close a deal. Play “Let’s Pretend” when a prospect asks for additional work and information before making a buying decision. Ask the prospect to picture a scenario where we complete the additional groundwork and provide a solution that fits everything the prospect needs – then what happens, will they buy from us? If they can’t envision pulling the trigger even after we’ve done the additional work, or if they’d still need another step in the process, it may be time to walk away or we may ask to move directly to this second step. When you want to know the future, bring it back to the present.

9. Being our own worst enemy. Never blame the prospect for stalling the process. Instead, look inward. It’s our job and responsibility to assure the prospect and address detours. The only way to streamline the process is to continue to refine our own sales approach and technique.

10. Keeping our fingers crossed that a prospect doesn’t notice a problem. The only way to avoid a potential disaster is to address it before it erupts. Always come clean and be open and transparent if something problematic comes up along the selling cycle. The prospect will respect that we “came clean” and shared it, and together we can problem-solve, building a solidifying team approach to the issue.

From my view as one involved in sales & business development everyday, these principles teach that an effective sales process is about sharing our company’s great talents and strengths, and connecting powerfully with those who are a strong fit in terms of values, approach, style and outcomes. Being open, honest, and transparent about who we are and what we deliver, along with serving as an effective listener, decision-maker and team-builder, will help us achieve, but also help us find new ways to be of true service to others.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. How are you developing your talent and leadership pipeline? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.

How is Your Company Accelerating High Potential Development?

Leadership pipelines must be continuously fed, but people have to be ready to lead. High-performing organizations differentiate their efforts at development with a focus on metrics, assessments and coaching.

Organizations need business agility, and this need is reflected in their efforts to prepare future leaders. “Accelerating High-Potential Employees on the Path to Leadership,” a 2013 study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity, detailed five practices that differentiate high-performing organizations’ efforts to accelerate high-potential employee development.

Key challenges in preparing the next cadre of leadership talent include identifying ideal participants, offering the right developmental opportunities and determining success measures. Yet even as organizations work to develop leadership acceleration programs for high-potential employees, many are plagued by insufficient access to elements such as stretch assignments, visibility and effective coaches.

The Five Steps

1. Define successful outcomes for high potential development programs. Using formal measurement tools to gauge the effectiveness of leadership development efforts can have a positive correlation to performance. Determine what the development program should accomplish and the measures that will indicate success. High-performance organizations report using a variety of measures.
One metric to consider is quality of movement — track the effectiveness of promotions and critical roles filled. This measure can complement more commonly used HR metrics such as performance ratings and retention rates. High-performance organizations also use 360-degree assessments, administered pre- and post-program, for insight.

• Select a small number of meaningful success measures to begin. These should align with goals.
• Use at least one measure that will allow for benchmarking progress year-over-year, such as promotions.
• Choose an external measure that will allow comparisons between the organization and competitors, such as industry retention rates.
• Review these measures and revise them as the program matures, creating new measures of success as needed to reflect the organization’s changing goals.

2. Choose talent purposefully; make branding and assessments work. According to the previously mentioned 2013 study, two factors that promote high potential development program success both have links performance: A company brand that tends to retain top talent and screening participants through an assessment process.

The brand-talent connection: Cultural fit should be a consideration when acquiring new talent; it’s a critical first step to build a workforce that will produce high-potential employees. The company’s brand can draw a talent pool that fits its culture in three ways:

• Consumer brand: The company’s visibility, longevity, success and reputation can affect the size of the applicant pool, allowing organizations to select the best matches.
• Employer brand: The firm’s reputation for excellence in leadership and culture helps to attract internal and external candidates who self-select to fit the culture.
• Talent brand: The organization’s ability to resonate with segments of workers in defined critical roles such as engineers, marketing or IT identifies the firm as a place where individual goals can be achieved.

The assessment-talent connection: More than two-thirds (67 percent) of high-performance organizations use assessments to screen participants for high potential development programs. Consider the transparency of the process; it should allow organizations to clarify what kind of business skills and behaviors it values. When employees understand the criteria for high potential designation, they can channel their efforts to achieve it.

Informing high-potential employees they have been identified as such can influence retention, motivation and engagement. About three-quarters (73 percent) of study participants from high-performance organizations do designate high-potential employees. Yet, of this group, 29 percent inform those employees of that status, while 71 percent do not.

Assessments are also used to determine when candidates are ready for promotion, a key differentiator for high-performance organizations. The readiness factor may include such elements as completing courses, participating in job rotations, acquiring recommendations from peers, supervisors or customers, earning a degree, accomplishing developmental goals, or other criteria specific to the organization or position. The most common pools reported are ready in two to three years, ready in one year and ready in four to five years.

3. Excel at coaching. Coaching is a critical tool that two-thirds of high-performance organizations use to hone specific skills in high-potential talent or to help them reach full potential more quickly. However, coaching itself can be difficult to master. Companies should ensure that managers have sufficient opportunities to practice coaching skills via experiential training, such as role-playing. These sessions can help managers sharpen their listening, probing and feedback skills so they can effectively coach the high-potential employees they manage. Further, practice sessions help to build managers’ confidence, which increases their ability to gain the trust of those they coach.

Another success factor related to coaching is having a coaching culture, which the 2013 study has found to be significantly correlated to performance. The study “Creating a Coaching Culture” found that a coaching culture thrives when companies establish coaching as an organizational competency, when they invest in and train managers in coaching and when they use coaching on multiple levels to strengthen targeted skills to help high-potential employees achieve their performance potential and to transfer knowledge.

4. Expose high-potential employees to a broad business foundation. It’s not enough for employees to excel in their chosen fields. High-potential employees must develop broad business understanding as well. In fact, three times as many high-performance organizations as lower performers credit a broad business curriculum as a major success factor in their high potential development programs.
An effective way to build this wide and deep curriculum is to involve senior leadership in designing and conducting training. Invite chief officers from finance, marketing, sales, operations and human resources to inform the learning curriculum and help create learning tools to build relevant skills in high-potential employees. Some organizations address broad business skills by partnering with or sending high-potential employees to external programs.

5. Focus on visibility and challenge to develop high-potential employees. A willingness to provide high-profile stretch assignments to employees identified as high potentials was the top factor differentiating high-performance organizations. Managers should be encouraged to step outside their silos and collaborate to identify challenging projects that aren’t being addressed, then match high-potential talent to those projects.
Companies also should ensure that high-potential employees have an opportunity to present the results of those projects to the senior leadership team, or even the board of directors. This serves two purposes: it helps the high-potential employee get top-level exposure and it provides an opportunity for the executive team and board to begin developing relationships with those in the talent pipeline.

Activate the Framework
Learning organizations that want to develop their future leaders more thoroughly and quickly than their competitors can activate the five-step framework as follows:

• Audit. Take the time to purposefully examine how an organization identifies and develops high-potential talent.
• Act. Put the people, processes and programs in place that will produce the future leadership talent an organization needs.
• Accelerate. Build a sustainable system of leadership talent acceleration that will provide an organization with a competitive edge.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. How are you developing your talent and leadership pipeline? We would love to hear from you with comments or questions. Send me a note via email at brad@aperiocoaching.net or on Twitter @bparcells.